This Woman’s Work: Akanzyla

Akanzyla is an Indian climate refugee living in T’karonto, located in the Northeast region of Turtle Island, on the shores of Lake Ontarí’io in 2050. The government has offered climate refugees housing in the run-down condos that flooded the land’s infrastructure in the early 2000s. Akanzyla is a polyworker, offering spiritual caretaking services for online communities, participating in algae cultivation and transformation experiments as a creative biologist in the Almanac Cooperative, all while being the second parent to two children conceived through hybridized surrogacy in a nurture pod and making content to increase the value of her namesake coin. Given the climate circumstances, she is only able to safely venture outdoors 1-2 times a week, leaving her physically isolated, yet weaved through digital realms of care and collectivity.

In this 7-hour live durational performance, you are invited into her apartment to witness a work day from a possible future where feminine principles such as interspecies communication, ancestral intelligence, ecological healing, care and cooperation reign, but conflict with the residue of destructive legacy systems including colonialism, white supremacy and capitalism. Audience members will be invited to participate in collective work throughout the day, sensing into what futures of how we labour are available to us.

*Please note as this is a durational performance you can tune-in/watch for as long as or as little as you choose. Join during a break or have a window/tab open throughout the day. There is also a participatory option while you watch, which isn’t required but recommended.

This work is informed by Memory Work, a foresight research project on the future of woman’s work led by FromLater and At The Moment (ATM).

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Hima Batavia is a writer, artist and cultural producer based in T’karonto whose work is rooted in collectivity, emergence, radical systems imagination, fun and liberated futures.
IG: @hima_batavia
Website: himabatavia.com
Newsletter: himabatavia.substack.com

THIS WOMAN’S WORK PROJECT TEAM

At The Moment – Alica Hall and Natasha Singh
At The Moment honours the collective strength of women who are breaking boundaries, using their voices and embracing who they are. We connect women to experiences that celebrate who they are. We share traditions and culture. We curate objects that are rooted in our history but redesigned for modern times.

From Later – Macy Siu and Robert Bolton
From Later is a foresight studio based in Toronto. We monitor and make sense of change, developing clear-sighted and judicious futures perspectives. We develop tools and ways of working that augment our faculties for research, problem-solving, and creativity. We explore the capacities of art, science, theory, and strategy to address complex challenges.